I have often wondered how different my life would have turned out had the following real life choices been made. Here goes.
When I was younger my family almost moved to Bangladesh due to my Dad’s job. But at the last minute he decided to turn the offer down because of the chronic flood situation there.
It's always exciting to move to another country when you’re younger. I can’t say for sure how my life would have turned out if my dad didn’t turn the job down. But Bangladesh with a population of over 162 million is a really big country. Dhaka has 12 million people. But seeing how I picked up Cantonese so easily in Macau, I’m sure I would have been able to pick up Bengali just as easy.
I lived in Macau from 1991 to 1995. It is a really nice place. As I said above, I picked up Cantonese through word of mouth. No one taught me.
The downside to that is before I left Singapore my Mandarin was superb. I recall once in Primary One I did so well for a test that my Mandarin teacher gave me money to buy ice cream from the canteen.
Of course at that time Mandarin wasn’t spoken in Macau since it was still under Portuguese rule. Since then my Mandarin has never been the same. Of course the same thing happened to my Cantonese when I came back to Singapore.
When time came for me and my family to leave Macau in 1995, I have always felt that coming back to Singapore was a mistake. We should have stayed in Macau as we were nicely settled there.
But on the other hand, assuming I didn’t follow my family to Macau and stayed in Singapore I still would be able to speak Mandarin now.
I really liked Macau. Indeed Macau is everything than Singapore is not. Town planning is poor. Buildings are dirty and that’s one of the reasons why I like Macau so much.
In late 2002 we went back to Macau after my dad finished a business trip in Shenzhen. When the ferry arrived in Macau, the first thing he said was that he felt ‘at home’. I felt the same way although I never said anything.
Coming back to Singapore by plane, while I sat beside the window as we descended to Changi Airport, I kept asking myself is this really my homeland? I somehow felt that I didn’t belong to Singapore. Sure, I only spent 4 years in Macau. But it was the best 4 years of my life.
